


the phoenix

by raleighpuppy



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Hallucinations, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, Religion, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-25
Updated: 2015-07-25
Packaged: 2018-04-11 02:11:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4417016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raleighpuppy/pseuds/raleighpuppy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Max Rockatansky, famed Road Warrior and Fool, reaches his end. And there's only one way men like him leave.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the phoenix

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so sorry for my garbage title.
> 
> Also, this was written to a really good Max fanmix on 8tracks called Psychopomp.

Max doesn't feel right-- he never feels right; he doesn't know what right would feel like anymore-- and he claws at his throat, rubs at his face with one hand, while keeping the other useful at driving and steering the stolen motorcycle. He can hear another motor next to him and the Vuvalini looks over at him, grins. Her grin unnerves him even more and he fidgets in his seat.

"Max!" someone, a woman, yells.

And he jerks the handlebar, sends himself flying into the sand, and screams. There's sand in his eyes, in his mouth, everywhere, and he screams at them, at the people yelling at him, asking him why he couldn't help them, why he failed. Hands shaking, he reaches for his gun.

"Stop!" he yells. His voice is hoarse, almost gone, with disuse. "Stop it!"

Snarling and growling with fury, he waves the gun around, pointing it at the countless ghosts haunting him. He pauses, panting, and lowers the gun when he spots _her_  among them and he feels like he's going to die. He feels like he's going to die a lot; it's the racing heart, sweaty palms, overarching and all-consuming fear that drives his every move.

But he doesn't expect to see Furiosa among the ghosts and it brings him to his knees in a combination of awe and horror.

The Citadel. The Citadel was rising last he saw. It was a phoenix among the ashes of the desert, a rising force, and it was far too great for him because he's burning burning burning, closer and closer to ashes, and he will never rise. Not again. Every spark brings him one step closer to being someone else's ghost.

And it's too much. He feels the panic fill his veins, overflowing into the rest of him, especially his brain and every beat of his heart is _survive survive survive_ as he kneels in the sand. His stomach lurches and he's shaking and he throws up, loosing what little water he's drank and the lizards he's been able to catch.

Slowly, he rises, still gripping the gun as the ghosts yell louder louder louder.

He's not the type to commit suicide. If he were, he'd have done it long ago. He's detached from everything except the yelling that fills every fiber of his being and he's trembling at the effort of holding himself together because it's so hard. He rubs his face, pulls at his hair, keens, stomps, bites his tongue. Suddenly, he throws himself on the ground, barely missing his own vomit, and buries his hands in the sand just to feel something real and screaming.

It's not enough, it's not enough, and he's tearing at his own arms, breaking the skin, drawing blood. He chomps down on his tongue and the iron-rich taste of blood floods his mouth. He kicks at his bike and, in his fury, he pours out the rest of his water.

Furiosa watches him, but doesn't move to stop him from destroying himself.

"Fool!" she hisses. "The Citadel--"

"Stop!" he interrupts. There's something wet on his face; he wasn't aware he'd started crying. "Stop it!"

His stomach lurches again and he coughs up stomach acid that burns his mouth on the way up.

He quietly whines and slides so he's lying with his rear end up in the air and his face in the burning sand. His hands shake like something awful, more than they ever have before. Slowly, he sits up and looks down at his hands covered in his own blood and laughs to hard he throws up again.

He moans and pulls at his hair. It's grown out since the last time he visited the Citadel, as has his beard. Distantly, some part of him thinks he has to return to get it cut again, but most of him is scared stiff because he's all alone and he's overcome with that very familiar feeling that nothing else exists, that he's entirely alone in the world.

Distantly, he remembers learning something in school. He learned many things in school, he thinks-- they all did-- but this thing is different; it kept him up at night when he had the luxury to spend nights worrying about things he learned in school instead of food, shelter, and his failures and fears. Whenever they learned about philosophers-- they're a dead race, he thinks, there are no more of them-- they were taught about one who talked about how you can't be sure anything but you exists unless you're touching it and if you know you're not perfect, there must be a God to be perfect.

He doesn't think there's a God, not anymore. All the Gods he's met have decreed themselves sacred and none of them are worth it. God doesn't mean anything anymore, not to him, but a small part of him remembers a God being kind and forgiving and something to love, though a part of him remembers fear.

He looks at his hands in the sand. The sand is real. And he can breathe a little easier knowing that at least the sand is real.

The chorus begins, the cries for help he failed to answer and still does, the calls of his name over and over and over. And he yells back at them, profanity, nonsense, whatever comes to mind, to ward them off, but it grows louder louder and he feels sick again.

Struggling to his feet, he grabs his gun and points it at the ghosts, and then, at the last second, turns it away.

Max Rockatansky is not the type to commit suicide.

He shoots himself in the head.

It connects.

He's a good shot.

His body lays out in the Wasteland sands, peaceful and silent and still. Still for perhaps the first time in a long long time. He's smiling.

* * *

 

It's a few days later on a patrol when Furiosa stumbles upon the lone motorcycle, and then the blood on the sand, and then the body. She doesn't recognize him at first; the man's too thin-- he's emaciated-- to be her Fool and his hair's too long. And then she sees his face and she falls to her knees in the sand, screaming, for the second time. 


End file.
